Category: Life in general

It’s been a busy, fun week. There are lots of things to update you on. I’ll try to do it in small doses. I just wanted to start off and thank everyone who was able to come and see us, especially for Abigail’s special day. She was so excited to have her grandparents, great-grandma, cousins, aunts, uncles, and everyone else here to share her day. The whole week was a race from start to finish, so we thank you all for putting up with us. Some of you who had to travel a great distance are home already. We hope that the rest of you make it there safely. It seems that the entire state is on fire.

Grandma and Grandpa Elcock and Great-Grandma Eslin arrived on Friday evening and presented what can only be described as Christmas in June to the girls. Many of you know that Abigail and Grace share a birthday, so there were those obligatory gifts. And we couldn’t leave out poor Lucy and Gwenyth, so there were plenty of treats and toys to go around. Everything was a hit, as always.

Saturday was Abigail’s big day. Somehow everyone made it in time to see her baptism. It was a crazy morning that gave way to a crazy day. But we were so glad at how it turned out. Abby looked beautiful in her new dress and she was really excited to have everyone. We found out later that one of Abby’s good friends from Arizona, Nate Mariner, was baptized on the same day. After the service, we headed over to Grandpa and Grandma Jenkins’ house for some lunch. Julie and her sisters put on a wonderful spread of stuff for the rest of us. The chicken marinade from Lisa was a hit as well. I got to take credit for it somewhat, as I was at the grill cooking it. Lisa made me look good, which is quite the feat, and which I always appreciate.

Sunday was another fun nursery day for Julie and me. Afterward we had some great salmon, salad, dessert, etc. I found this marinade for the salmon online and decided to try it. It turned out pretty good. Julie’s strawberry salads are always good as well. After dinner we decided to head up the canyon to South Fork. As the name implies, it’s the south fork of the Provo River. We were amazed at how crowded it was up there, and even more amazed at the demographic. The make-up of Utah is certainly changing. Despite the shock, we had a great time. The girls always love getting their feet wet and very cold. Even Gwenyth wouldn’t stay out of the river.

More later. And lots of pictures to come as well. I think we have a few thousand or so.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/

Update: I uploaded a video of pictures that Julie took of Abigail. The videos are QuickTime, so you’ll need that plugin. Hopefully it works for you. Scroll down and push play on it. Not the greatest quality. I played around with different compression. This one’s really small in size. I’ll probably update it to better quality soon.

Update 2: The video takes a lot of bandwidth, so I put one of those “more” things in. So click on the “more” link below and you’ll see it. This way the video doesn’t load unless you really want to look at it!

June is always a fun month for our family, and this year has proven to be no exception. There’s always the end of the school year, which means the beginning of summer. We have our anniversary (11 years of bliss — a shout-out to Jij!), followed closely by the girls’ birthdays. Then there’s always whatever happens around the 4th of July (notice my jazzy red white and blue theme?).

Continue reading “Abigail: 8, Grace: 6”

It’s been quite a week for us. Or quite a few weeks, I guess. I’ll probably be saying that for the next 20 years or so.

First I guess an explanation is in order for the title of the post. Lucy has discovered her mother’s makeup. She loves it. She is, of course, beautiful, and she thinks that putting makeup on (anywhere, apparently) makes her that much more lovely. Here’s the inspiration for the post’s title:

Apparently Lucy came prancing down the stairs a few days ago, looking like a lady of the night. She was puckering up for everyone, just in case we all happened to miss the stuff on her face. She was very proud of herself.

I haven’t written about the Moab trip. We had a really, really good time. Julie and I took a ton of pictures, which we’ll be posting soon. We’re also probably going to make a DVD, so you can once again gag at our cheesiness. I can’t really do the river trip story any justice, so I’ll suggest that you read Aaron’s account. By the way, Aaron, I still think that theadds.com would be a much better blog URL.

The summer already looks to be busy. We’re finishing up the move and getting settled here. The girls are loving the basement, especially Abigail and Grace. They stay up way too late. I wonder where they learned that from? The girls have summer movies, swimming, a cooking class at the city, gymnastics, and all kinds of fun stuff. Lucy just finished her music class a few days ago. She has absolutely loved it, and I think it’s been really good for her. Her teacher, Miss Leslie, is moving to St. George. It seems that her husband, Morgan, got quite the gig down there, so they’re heading down. Abby and Grace will turn 8 and 6 next weekend. And Julie and I will have been married 11 years. Pure bliss.

Abby will be getting baptized on June 30. She’s pretty excited. It’s hard to believe that it’s happening. We’ll have quite the crew here for it. Grandma and Grandpa Elcock are coming with Great Grandma Eslin. Aaron and Krisanne are coming. I think that Zac and Catherine are coming as well. Susi, UM, are you coming up? We’ll have some great 7-weed salad in your honor. And then we have the Jenkins clan and maybe some of the Steele family. All in all, we’ll probably have around 40 people. Should be fun. We hear that maybe even some of the Surprise folk may be around? Wardle?

That’s it for this update. I’ll provide more lively reading soon, I hope.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/midder/

We had a great trip to Moab the last 5 days or so. The Elcock clan all met up. Ali wasn’t able to make it. Something about maintaining a 4.0 GPA. Something I clearly cannot understand (the 4.0 part, that is). There was golf, food, near-death experiences on the river, hiking, food, talking with geese, video games, pictures, waking Gwenyth up at 10, and food. It was great.

On the way home, it actually snowed over Soldier Summit. And then by the time we got home the temperature was in the 40s. Yikes! Apparently the day prior it was almost 90. Quite a swing, I’d say.

We have lots of pictures and movies to sort through. We’ll be posting many of them. If those of you fortunate enough to be there have some cool pictures or video you want on the DVD we’re going to make, send them our way. My gmail email address can handle pretty large attachments. If you don’t know what that means, you probably don’t have anything I want.

Now for the move . . .